Walking the slug

My eldest son happened to spot this thing in one of Stockholm's southern suburbs.

What is this? A tree taking its armadillo-dog for a walk? Or is it a giant slug? Anyway, I though it could be fun scene to model.

The first thing I did was to do the orange creature itself. I made it from modelling clay, and it turned out like this.

Next I had a look around in Google Street View since I wanted to learn a little more about the closest surroundings. Here is an example screen shot.

Note that the protective fence around the tree closest to the "slug" is missing in the first (most recent) shot. Apparently it has been removed since it was doing no good anyway.

I also used Google to try to understand the back story. These are different photos of the same location but from different dates. The first photo is from 2011. It shows that the tree was surrounded by a protective fence.
 
The second one is from 2017. By then the fence has been knocked over, probably hit by a car, and the tree is supported by a rope fastened in the fence. I assume the "slug" has been placed in front of the tree to protect it from being hit again. Kind of innovative to paint it in that colour. I like that.
 
The last photo, taken by my son in 2018, shows that the fence is gone and the tree is instead supported by a rope tied to the "slug". I wonder if  it is a local resident who has taken pity of the tree, or if this is really the cities official way of dealing with the situation?

With the help of the photos I then started on the diorama itself.

I have also made a 3D model of the iron tree grate, which I have on order for printing. The grate is made up of 4 identical parts. The part is rendered like this.

That is the status as of today. Please stay tuned 😃

A finished diaorama

The lamp post has been installed, and by that the diorama is finished! Here are some pictures. Night pictures at the very end (as dark as it gets here in Sweden this time of the year).

Making a lamp post, part 2

The reflector of the lamp post model I am trying to replicate had quite a peculiar shape, as seen in the previous post. Like this (since I guess you do not remember or have not seen that post):

I could not figure out how to convincingly, and manually, create that form from plastic, metal or any other material. From brass using a lathe perhaps, but I do not have a lathe and would not know how to properly handle one, so I decided to once more pursue the path of 3D printing. After some struggling with the Web based 3D modelling tool I am using (Tinkercad) I managed to create a model that looks like this when uploaded to the 3D printing service (Shapeways):

I am eager to get the result delivered and see what it looks like in reality. My intention is to place a SMD LED inside it, and make the post actually work.

A concrete tree grate

In urban settings there is almost always some kind of grating around trees (Swedish: trädgaller/markgaller). This helps air and water getting down through the soil. In the place and time I'm modeling the tree grates were made of concrete. I have a fairly good mental picture of what they looked like, but has not managed to find any left in real life. The only thing I found at first was this picture of a grate in bad shape. Poor tree!

(Photo: Örjan Stål)

I found the above photo in a publication from the Stockholm traffic and park administration (Trafikontoret). That in turn led me to a helpful person who told me that the above were the standard grates in the city of Stockholm up to the 1990:s. He also was kind enough to supply me with a plan of such a grate.

Since I did not want to manually cut all those tiny holes, and get them all straight and tidy at the same time, I decided to instead do a 3D print of a grate. Such a print is now awaiting processing at Shapeways. Here is what the model look like. It consists of four different parts, that will be cut apart and fitted into a frame I will build from styrene.